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to build a home

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Something I’ve long wanted is to build a home exactly the way I want it.  Who doesn’t dream of that? To do that, you need a plot of land or some sort of existing shack to bulldozer.   If we want to stay in los alamos (and really, it seems fine!) and do this, options are very limited for staying in town.  There isn’t much of a suburbs around here, because everything turns into national forest and monuments and parkland.  Which is awesome!  No problem there. It’s just that buying land is very hard.  There are a few empty plots around the perimeter, but most of them are in a development with a retardedly anal HOA that would never work for me.  Others are sub-optimal land, like the half-way caved in steep hillside.  However, recently a plot of land in white rock became available.  It’s a subdivision of an original 5-acre lot, so a 2.5 acre parcel is available.  That’s enough space for me to feel happy with! Also the area is zoned R-A, residential agriculture, and 2.5 acres is good for 4.75 animals (goats!) and less than 24 chickens.  The restrictions are pretty lenient other than “don’t piss off the neighbors.”  There is a covenant but again, it’s a pretty chill area.  So, all good right?  The catch is, there hasn’t been a parcel of land for sale in this area since 2001.  I feel this pressure to act now.  So all of a sudden I’m thrust into the world of land and construction – and how do 2 mortal people afford that kind of thing when there’s already an existing mortgage payment? Good question.  We’re meeting with a loan person in a few days to talk about how these things are even done, but I believe that to get a construction loan you have to have a pretty solid idea of what you are going to do.  So that brings me back to point one!

What I want in a home …. definitely open floor plans.  Probably all one level, or if 2 I would have the bedroom suite separate from everything else, maybe a partial loft.  The current home feels very restrictive in how all the little rooms have their own function, so it’s hard to blend uses!  This is mostly a media issue.  Want to listen to music? the good speakers are downstairs.  want to use the computer? office. want to watch tv while playing a computer game? We actually just dragged the tv upstairs for that reason, so really the office is where we do 95% of our lounging around.  In probably 15% of the available space.  But now, of course if you’re downstairs (where the comfy couch is ….. ) there is no tv!  So we have to watch movies in the office, which is fine except there are only office chairs so we can’t cuddle, so then we talk about adding a loveseat to the office… this sort of repetition of devices drives me crazy.  I want to have ONE comfy couch, ONE epic music center, ONE wall of computers, ONE media station/TV.  And be able to combine then depending on mood!   So, we’re looking at spaces that have a central “core” that is open to all those things, basically.  With a wall o’ kitchen, and cooking island, so the kitchen isn’t totally removed from the fun things that are happening.

Also, because the weather here is so nice most of the time, I want to be able to open some doors and have patios and decks and covered or semi-covered outdoor living areas.   I want lots of light and clerestory windows and skylights and glass.

Construction materials … I want steel beams.  I want siding material that isn’t painted, but will weather naturally and last forever. Cement board maybe? steel?  I want polished concrete floors with radiant heating.  I want a living roof, or PV panels or both.  I want rainwater collection, and passive heating and cooling.  I want clever shade in the summer and sunlight in the winter.  I want lots of open windows and fresh air movement.  I want a really really tight building envelope and smart HVAC so that I can finally actually be comfortable at home in the winter instead of freezing downstairs and sweating upstairs.  I want pathways meandering around the otherwise-natural landscape.

Is this something that I can have right now?  How much would I be willing to give up to have it? Would I be willing to take out a 30 year mortgage to make it happen? How much of a monthly payment is reasonable?  How much do we gamble on Geoff getting a staff position?  If this had come along in , say, 3 years from now, we would be in a much better place to make these decisions. Alas.

So, I’m piecing together ideas.  I really love the floorplans and fun modules from Studio 101.  And I’ve been reading through posts from Michelle Kaufmann, who works with 101 a great deal.  The catch here, of course (because there always is one) is they are based in CA.  Sure, you can truck modules out to NM but is it worth is?  As of yet unknown.

Even though I’ve been spending a lot of time there, there are certainly many other potential options.

Marmol Radziner Prefab

Resolution:4

Alchemy WeeHouse

Ma Modular

Rocio Romero

Method Homes

Blu Homes

I also stumbled over a link to passive solar in northern new mexico, while researching Trombe walls.  Handy!

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It’s a new year

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Wow.  It’s been so long, that I actually had to stop and stare at my own blog front page and struggle to remember how to log in to write a post. For shame. There have been a lot of reasons that I haven’t been writing, but they are pretty bad.  Things like – I don’t want to write about my awesome trip to Germany because I need to photos to post along with that and I’m comically behind on photos.  A large part of that problem is derby photography – it’s easy and fun to take several thousand photos, but it’s not easy and NOT FUN to process that many.  And then I guilt myself into dealing with them by saying that I can’t process fun things, like travel, till I finish my derby.  And look where we are! No photos at all.

Another thing that’s been going on is I tend to mute myself to avoid unpleasant confrontations.  This hasn’t been working out well, since I end up feeling frustrated anyhow and things have a way of coming to a head no matter what I do or don’t do.  And I really miss having a record of my life, and a place to talk through things with myself. And maybe if I treat it as a one-sided soliloquy that will be easier than an actual conversation.  I was scrolling back through my own archives to earlier in 2010 and the start of that year was very rough.  But the upside was that Geoff and I started talking a lot more about a lot of things, and overall it was good.  And I see now I’m doing the same thing, so I guess this should be a lesson to myself to not shy away from the hard things, and also look at the patterns of my own life rather than being blind to them.

So .. July 2010.  What’s happened since then. Facebook has this thing now, called Timeline, maybe you’ve heard of it?  Since I’ve  been so terrible at life, maybe that can help me fill in some blanks. In the summer of 2010, my friend Cinder was living here, and that was basically awesome. Did a lot of cooking, had lots of fun.  Geoff was in and out on visits and maybe we lost a little bit of private time but it was totally offset by lots of fun! I finished building coop V2.0 which was a huge improvement over V1 which was an unstable stack made of rotting lumber and found items. The chickens didn’t care much but it was literally falling apart. V2.0 featured such improvements as: actual new lumber, framed construction, and a peaked metal roof!

I also flew across the country to spend a day or 2 in PA with Andrew and Austin prior to departing for Europe.  This included highlights as: visiting an awesome old abandoned penitentiary and drinking a lot, and also passport madness – I was really confused about the passport rules for travel to EU as concerns the expiration date.  Apparently just having a valid passport isn’t enough, it also needs to not be expiring in the next 3 months.  But maybe it doesn’t matter for Germany? but maybe it does? I’m not bad at the internet I just couldn’t find a straight answer to this very basic question and then as the trip got closer I got nervous about sending my passport off in the mail.  And so it ended up that the day of the trip I was standing in a long line at the agency in Philly where it was confirmed that it was Not Good and I got a rush job with a few hours turnaround on a brand new passport.  So, props to the passport agency people! It was stressful but we made the flight and all was well.  Germany was awesome and deserves a post of its own!  Which I will do. Promise.

Later in the summer I had a fridge death (bad smells) got a new fridge (it’s awesome!) reserved Cataclysm, continued to poke at my very frustrating thesis / deal with school people / try and get a new advisor, and visited Ojo Caliente with my best friend’s parents where a few ideas got planted in mah head, and read the Hunger Games books in approximately 1 day.

That fall, Geoff and I visited the Trinity Site which is only open to the public for 2 days of the year, had more beers at Socorro Springs brewery, went to the Bosque del Apache bird refuge and attended my first (not his first) Blizzcon together!  It was nerdy and very fun, highlights including Cinder smuggling approximately a sixpack of beers into the convention center in her pants (what?) and extremely dorky photos on the frozen throne with a sort of smelly foam lich king helm.  And then the woooorrrrrst, most hungover flight back home EVER. At one point we were literally wandering around the tarmac, squinting bleerily trying to figure out how to get back inside the terminal and how does that even happen?

Thanksgiving that year, Geoff and I traveled to mom’s house in Ohio for deliciousness and hung out with my brother, new sister angie, and earl & cindy.  It was a lot of fun, we made handdipped beeswax candles in the garage with dan, sipped on tequila like responsible adults and posed for family photos.  All while proselytizing about vibram fivefingers which by this point has become kind of a thing. December was nice, as Geoff was released from the semester of school, so we relaxed and played wow and opened presents.  That segued into the season of unseasonably cold weather where NM dropped below 0 F for multiple days, combined with gas shortages.  While my house retained gas delivery, my 1981 furnace was unable to stand up to the barrage of unending cold and some pipes froze and broke in the crawlspace, and indoors I watched the thermometer struggle to keep the overall temp in the 50′s.  When it dipped below to 49 is when I started to get concerned but it’s really not pleasant when it’s that chilly inside! Aspen and I spent a lot of time in a small room with a space heater. NM declared state of emergency and the lab closed.  I spent a lot of time in the miserable crawl space. At one point I was showering at work for several days because even once water was restored, it was unable to get upstairs to the shower and no one likes sink-bathing in the kitchen. no one.  Geoff left just in time to miss this particular disaster, a trend that was to repeat..

In March I undertook a project to re-do the bathroom counter and sink upstairs, a project made very exciting by “non-standard construction” aka you can’t buy that size counter and also these walls aren’t square.  In the end, once the counter and sink were ripped out, it became clear that there was no way to buy a counter that would just work and my only option was to build a counter, so I got a lot of plywood and cement board and cut it to fit the not-square spaces and then tiled it.  Tiling was a bitch, but it looks pretty nice and the new sink and hardware is suuuuuuch an improvement.  In April Geoff and I took delivery of a shoe-box sized parcel from the post office, on a sunday no less, full of 27 peeping peeps.  I had raised 3 young silkies the year before, but clearly this was a whole new level of chickens.  My dad and brother came out for a visit which was awesome and fun.  During this visit Geoff sort of hinted at things to come.  And a belated christmas present came to fruition – Geoff and I converted my old 20D camera to be full-time IR only, which was something he had dabbled around with, but only through very long exposure filtered shots.  He was very pleased and remained hooked on all things IR!

In May, Geoff proposed, on the 10th.  We went out for margaritas and quietly reveled for a little bit before calling everyone :) Domestic life continued with the peeps getting ever bigger and more dusty as we were brooding them in a pen in the living room.  NEVER AGAIN. By this point we were in a pretty solid routine of travel where Geoff would spend 2 weeks in los alamos, and then 2 weeks in florida.  It was predictable and enough to get by, but we were both definitely looking forward to him finishing his phd and moving out here, and to that end he was really ramping up his contact with lanl people to find the right person to get an in. Also in May, I traveled to WPI to present / re-defend / meet my new advisor.  I stayed with a friend in Boston, who was awesome enough to loan me his car for the drive to Worcester.  The flight out was terrible, I spent several hours in TX, and didn’t arrive to my friend’s apartment till almost 5am, and I was presenting an hour away around 11am I think.  So it was a terrible bad morning and I was exhausted and loopy and delirious BUT it went well, and my thesis cover sheet was officially signed.  We had a delicious celebratory dinner and I headed back to NM.

I started dipping my toes into wedding planning towards the end of the month. We decided that sooner rather than later was the way to go, and I decided that water and trees should be involved, preferably turning golden yellow. So: fall it was!  From engagement to wedding we had 5 months to plan which I understand is a bit on the low side? What with everything going on, it was more like 4 months by the time we got started.  And 3 months by the time we settled on a plan??  We took a little mini-vacation to Ojo Caliente where I had had a thought all those months ago, to scope it out for a possible wedding and also do some soaking and relaxing.  It was nice, and the round barn was awesome but I got sticker shock and had family that thought it might not be convenient.  At that point we scaled back our thinking to doing something casual in the woods and having a reception locally in a small lodge and self-catering but then I started feeling a deep paranoia that that wouldn’t be awesome enough to justify family and friends flying across the country.  Expectations! Weddings!  In the end, after a LOT of agonizing and making spreadsheets and budgets we decided on a place in Albuquerque.

In June the peeps were finally big enough to get kicked outside, so that meant a massive amount of work on Coop V3.  With 20-odd birds, an expansion was in order, so I took the V2 coop and essentially tripled it.  So that involved building out another 2/3 of framing onto the original 1/3, all of which is elevated 3′ off the ground. Added a second window, and a whole new array of nest boxes.  Around the time that the framing was underway, Geoff departed back to FL land, so I was left to finish my grandiose plans on my own.  To bring together the two sections of coop, at the frame level I used some massive carriage bolts to bring joists together below the deck, but the real masterpiece was the unified roof.  I eventually settled on a single-slope type roof, with a large amount of overhang front and back for shade and weather protection over the doorway and the roof eaves which are open for ventilation.  I agonized over roofing material for days before settling on some pretty basic metal corrugated sheets. Bringing those home along with some 10′ lumber all strapped to the roof of my car under some extreme wind conditions by myself was not an experience I would like to repeat.

Roosting, new pallet window

So I spent a lot of time crawling around the roof framing, wrestling with flashing, nails, screws, joist hanging hardware, roofing screws and cross bars, generally just winging things! It was instructive and while things aren’t perfect for a coop it’s pretty awesome I think! One the ladies were kicked out of the house into their new home they underwent a lockdown period, to try and brainwash them of all previous memories of where home is, and get them in the habit of returning there to roost. Most take to it, but sometimes a few get adventurous and make us find them.

June also saw my introduction to the Los Alamos Derby Dames, a local start-up derby league.  I skated with santa fe some 2 years ago, but then that team dissolved and I segued into only derby photography and no skating.  Santa fe came back, but my dedication to driving an hour one-way multiple times a week for practice, and 200 miles roundtrip for a scrimmage did not.  So this had me very enthused to be able to skate locally, make new friends, and be able to get involved in a new league building and doing things on our own terms!  In June I also ripped up the entire living room carpet and also in a frenzy took down the shitty old vertical blinds, because it seemed much easier than cleaning everything.  The underflying floor is maybe ok to refinish and I put that on my list.  In June we also kill and process a rooster (to the left in the photo above) who was one of two that came in our box.  The other one, a handsome guy we gave away but the little gray bird didn’t find a home in time before he started make a huge ruckus.  The kill was messy and a bit traumatizing but I find the processing very enjoyable.  Aspen enjoyed the organ meat, the feathers got composted and the rest of the bird was plucked, cleaned and frozen.

At the end of June, Geoff flew out of town, I went home to a derby practice… and billowing black clouds of destruction loomed over the town.  Yep, day one of the Las Conchas fire.  The long and short of THAT tale is, I built a 5-gallon waterer for the birds, packed up the car with camping stuff, valuable electronics and … waited.   Eventually the evacuation call came so Aspen and I left town and drove north.  I was going to just camp it out, so I went to Carson Nat’l Forest, but I did not anticipate just how hard it would be to be alone and isolated, but still relatively close to the action.  And yet cut off from information feeds.  Also they closed the forest. The morning of that second day a ranger came by to collect camping fee/ check in and I just started crying I was so overwhelmed.  After that, I drove east into Taos and stayed one night at a dog-friendly hotel.  It was ok, except I felt like I was spending too much money and still feeling miserable.  Also it was raining ash in Taos.  After that, I took up some lovely friends on their offer to stay at their place which was south of Santa Fe.  On the way I tried to talk my way back into the town, but was stopped by guards and turned back.  I was feeling very depressed and helpless even as well meaning family and friends wondered what I was doing, during this big moment of fire – after all, that’s my job? It was disheartening to say that I was useless and got kicked out of town even while some of my coworkers remained there, doing useful tasks.  If I could have done things differently I would have never left, and I’m still pretty sad about everything I missed.  Which I realize that may sound strange to some people, it’s like, wildfire and emergency management is what I am more interested in studying than anything else and I completely blew this chance. Sigh. Anyway I moved into this newly purchased home, in a rural area.  There was no furniture and no potable water, but it was still a huge improvement, I could go into santa fe and get some internet on, and had company occasionally as ang and ro came by to do things.  Eventually the hellish week ended and I was able to return home but man, if I could change one thing of this past year, it would be that.  Not that it happened, just what I did. Probably the best thing to come out of this week was a nice boost to a friendship that was based on derby and had lapsed over the year, and my discovery of Joe’s Cafe in santa fe, which is an awesome proponent of local foods and healthy living.

July was actually a comparatively low-key month! I think we all needed that.  Geoff was in town to talk with T division about a post doc position! And then in August I flew out to FL to pack him up and drive him across the country for good :)  Let me just repeat that for good measure: August. In Florida.  Packing up a cramped second-floor apartment. Loading a moving truck. Oh god it was so terrible ;;

We met Geoff’s mom (first time for me) and Dad who had going-away gifts and family furniture that we also loaded up, managed to get the saturn onto the car carrier, and the carrier attached to the truck, we hooked up PARTY CUBE for iphone mp3 action in the truck and started driving. 2 days later we were home! unpacking was a breeze compared to loading, especially with a well-timed arrival (for us) of our neighbor’s daughter/fellow skater and her husband.  The next day we returned the moving truck and went on to ABQ for a wedding tasting at Los Poblanos!  August also saw the first-ever los alamos derby skate clinic which was awesome and fun.

September was intense.  We sourced a local winery at a wine festival (Anasazi Fields) for the wedding, adopted a pot-belly pig, I visited with alpacas and got a new haircut, followed by a new driver’s license, found local chocolates for the wedding favors and in general engaged in a massive frenzy of wedding stuff.  The pig only lasted a week, as it turns out she was HELL SWINE.

 

Pig and dog

And then.. October.  It started out THE WORST but ended up kinda ok. The WORST part was my sweet dog Aspen was running around the yard and in that very same corner as the picture above, hidden in all that uncharacteristic overgrowth in the wake of monsoon season, was a rusty metal horseshoes pole that I had never been able to get out of the ground.  Aspen has run around that metal spike for 5 years now on an almost daily basis, but this one day.. she ran over it instead.  And ripped her leg open.  The most horrible sounding yelp and whimpers and I see her skin just hanging open while she wailed. it was awful.  It was also 6pm.  The local on-call vet wasn’t up to it, and neither was the head surgery-capable guy.  So we had to load her into the car and drive to santa fe to the emergency animal clinic.  The vet said that she would be put under for the surgery to put her leg back together, so we went home.  Around 11pm I got a call that said once she was under and they started looking at the leg, it appeared there may be a puncture wound and would I okay a scan?  After the scan they called back to verify that she did indeed puncture her abdomen on the metal which meant they would need to do a full abdominal exploratory surgery to make sure no organs or digestive tract was shredded and also do a full cleaning of the abdominal cavity to prevent systemic infection.  After the surgery to check things out the good news is that her internals were ok, the bad news was that she ripped the abdominal muscle clear off of her pelvis and they weren’t sure how well it would reattach.  All of this a week before the wedding!

She spent a few days in the ER under constant monitoring of BP, heart rate, temperature etc, while receiving a constant IV of antibiotics.  We went to see her and she was so full of tubes and wires and probes and drains, all of her legs terribly swollen.  On thursday I bought her home but she still had drains in her, constantly leaking blood, unable to go up or down stairs.  We had to restrain her for her own safety but she would freak out and go into maximum psychotic mode if we tried to crate her.  I ended up picking up some prescriptions for sedatives but I’m not sure who needed them more. On Friday I took her to the local vet who would board her on their hospital level while we were busy getting married and honeymoon’d.  That was probably the best possible decision, I was agonized at the time, but she made it through the weekend, and never did show any signs of infection, and we were able to focus on the whole wedding thing.

The wedding!  It was awesome. I’ll probably make that a post unto itself as well!  Also Honeymoon!  And right after that, I officially graduated with a MS in FPE, some 9 years after I started. The rest of the month was a frenzy of preparation and crafting for the derby dames halloween party that we put on downtown (great fun!).  November followed up a momentous month with the successful defense of Geoff’s dissertation, and final release from the protracted, drawnout, unceasing, neverending, unfunded work he was doing long after he was supposed to be done >.<  Glory be, all done!  November also took us on a roadtrip up to Denver for the Derby national championships.  So much good derby! wow!  Thanksgiving this year we celebrated at home with friends, and a Tofurkey.  It was delicious and fun! I would like to make the house cleaner and nicer overall, things like refinishing the floor are still on my list, which is now make exponentially more challenging by the addition of a lot of furniture when Geoff moved in.  There isn’t really any “extra” space to temporarily relocate anything so I don’t know how to proceed with that.

December was full of snow days (AWESOME), regular life and then christmas at home, followed by travel to FL.   We flew into JAX and visited with Geoff’s dad, mom, and step-dad (all at once!) and watched Girl with a Dragon Tattoo with his dad. They we drove on down a ways to Vero Beach to visit my grandparents.  Sadly my grandma was having a rough few days and wasn’t able to spend much time with us.  We hoped to go out to dinner but grandpa showed up and gave us some money and said to enjoy but he had to go back home :(  So it was really nice seeing them and I’m glad I got out there, just too bad we didn’t have more time!  After that we drove south to Miami and struck west to visit the everglades.  It was cool and all, but …  well, it was really crowded for one.  We’re talking crowds of people and cars parked up and down the highway roadside.  I did see a lot of alligators!  But we missed / it was sold out the tram ride with a ranger so all we could do really (at this particular entrance) was wander around on our own for a bit.   Oh well.  I’m not sure it was worth the hellish drive down the FL expressway but I can say i’ve been there now.  Then we visited with some friends in Miami and probably kept them up far too late, and met a cool cat, a Bengal.  Flew out of Miami the next day!  With a lot of delta skylounge food along the way, which is probably still the coolest thing of flying.  We got back and proceeded to play SWTOR nonstop for a long weekend until sadly, blearily, it was time to go back to work :(

And here we are.  I didn’t set out to write a recap post, but it just seemed weird jumping into my actual topic with this year and a half long gap just sitting there.

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palletizing

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Free stuff!  I’ve gotten a load of a pallets recently, and I hunger for more! I got 5 my first trip out, and promptly used 4 to make a compost bin, at long last.  I need to find a pitchfork though!  I’ve got so much straw and yard cuttings and kitchen scraps in there it’s already too heavy to turn. http://www.villagecarpentrysd.com/design-pallet has some ideas for clever potting benches!  I could fit one of those on the side porch for sure.

I’ve been reading about SAR a bit, again.  http://www.mc2sar.org/ is the local canine SAR group, and while I think Aspen is probably too old (sadface!!) to invest the training in, being as it takes 1-2 years to get mission-ready I could totally be preparing myself.  I haven’t emailed yet, but .. might be just the sort of activity for me.  Outdoorsey, survival, hiking, service oriented.  It would have a set schedule of 2 field trainings per week (sun/thurs) that are legit enough for me to feel ok being afk for raids, but still present the other nights.  And I’m much more likely to stick with things that are scheduled.  So, if I go for it, could start attending trainings and picking up on how the dogs are trained while also being a contributing support member.  With the long-term goal of getting a young weim to train at some point maybe next year, depending on life.   I’ve been a little too nervous to actually contact them yet though, still.. thinking on it.

So far, living with a roommate has been pretty fun.  Have someone around to chat with, go on hikes, cook for!  Last weekend, on the 4th we were pretty active – went to see Twilight (…) and then on to santa fe for the wine festival!  Spent about 2 hours sampling and wandering, and untold dollars on purchasing some choice bottles and other local delicacies.  It was really great!  I was pleased to be able to sample so, so many iterations on themes, there is nothing like a wine festival to expose you to countless flavors and develop a sense for what you like, or don’t like, and why.  Also, since it was towards the end of the last day, and well into 4th of July evening, a lot of the tents were underpopulated and we got to chat with the vendors.  Fun!  After that we headed up the santa fe mountain to Ten Thousand Waves – I picked up my NM residents discount card for future spoiling, and we did a soak in the communal women’s tub.  A lovely shower to clean off all the dust from the day, slipped into the robes they give you and padded up to a nice outdoor deck.  It was about 106 which is hotter than I keep mine, but with a 60-degree dip tank right there to cool off :D  After a while i was so relaxed it was all I could do to slump mostly upright in a deck chair with the evening breezes rusting the leaves overhead.  Ahhh.

Other than that, life has been pretty routine.  Work, play, hike, read, rinse & repeat.  Today is exciting because waiting at home for me are a pair of Women’s KSO Treks, and a brand new m’fing imac!  holy shit!  My trusty laptop is now 3.5 years old of almost constant use, and even with a logic board replacement its really been struggling lately.  I told myself I could have an imac when I finished grad school but it’s been like 5 months now and I still haven’t gotten comments back from my advisor, so like … I jumped the gun.   Very excited to go home and gently caress it.

Last weekend there was a derby match in Taos, it was Taos vs noobs and Dallas came to skate against the munecas.  So I have a lot of photos from that day to process, I’ve been waiting to install LR3 on the new computer to get started on the processing though.   Disappointingly, my Canon 40D stopped working last week. The shutter doesn’t … quite do what it needs to, and the camera throws up Err99.  Which is sort of a catchall for communication woes, but I checked the lens, no lens, the CF card, no CF card, different battery – all to no avail so that pretty much leaves the shutter.  Naturally it’s 5 months out of warranty so I need to call Canon and figure out what the next step is for repair.  What this meant for me last weekend for derby was ..  my only option was to bring my old 20D along to use.   At first I was really angry about that (it’s so outdated! the ISO capabilities are crap! the shots per second is slow!) but I decided to look at it as an opportunity.  The first derby game I ever shot was in Taos, using that camera (different lens, granted) and the results were pretty bad!  So this will be a chance to see how I’ve improved since then (with the addition of A) a Sigma 50-150 lens which I do love and B)LR3 noise-reduction voodoo  which let me brave shooting on “H” iso mode).   So not an exact comparison but should be interesting to compare when I get some photos up.

I’ve been busily cooking lately.  Last night was some stuffed calabacitas from the farmers market produce haul and tonight or tomorrow I want to attempt gluten-free homemade pizza.  hee.  Some other recipes I want to keep in mind:  Rice noodle dishes for the summer; Tacos de Papa which has me wanting a tortilla press;  Summery cakes for a special occasion; and a peach or plum crumble that looks divine.  And nothing says summer to me like a nice Gazpacho!  I’ll have to make that and see if Geoff eats it when he’s not trying to impress me lol (I made a nice lunch before I knew he hates tomatoes and he was totally smooth about it) Lastly, more science in the kitchen: homemade ginger ale looks fun!

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YAK ATTACK

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Summer… time for grilling!  I got 1 lb of awesome looking Yak meat from a Taos grazier who has a stand at the farmers market.  The plan: to craft some into a burger in the style of this spicy bison burger recipe, and make more of it into some green chili breakfast sausage!  Yay! I would like to compare it to the green chili bison sausage of awesomeness.

The visit so far is progressing well!  The plan on Friday was to drop off the baby rooster in santa fe, perhaps load up some free pallets if they are still there and then on to abq.  Pick up some food at Annapurna and be at the airport at 9!    It actually all worked out quite well.  The rooster is re-homed, and the lady was really delighted with him!  She drove off smiling with little dude sitting on her lap peering out the window.  The 2 girls seem to be adjusting to being down a member.  I next swung by a nearby neighborhood in santa fe and managed to load 5 free pallets into my car, and then on to abq.  Got some delicious food and picked up geoff.  We just hung out on the roof level of the airport parking garage and ate looking out over the city.  I got a present!  A folder of 100 CDs that he burned from his collection! This is awesome because: new music! but also my XM radio (and even FM radio) have ceased to function in my car, so CDs are my only form of musical entertainment and i was getting REALLY sick of my old ones.  So, it’s been fun flipping through and picking one at random, never know what I’ll get.

So, yeah.  We stayed up late on Friday, and slept in Saturday blessedly rooster-free.  Sat/Sunday were like breakfast, did some construction work, got some plants from a greenhouse in white rock.  Built an amazingly ghetto compost bin from my free pallets!  It’s possible I’ll add some refinement later (like, oh a real hinged lid, and maybe a way to open it from the front. or maybe not) but for now it works to keep the animals from digging and making a freaking mess all over.  And started working on the coop V2.  I have a hard time with framing because – there is no level surface anywhere for me to work!  I could really use like… a garage or workshop or basement – someplace with a floor? a giant table?  So it’s hard getting things square, or cuts that are straight so I have to repress my urge to fiddle for perfection.  Just telling myself it’s good enough, I can can fill in those gaps with caulking no problem.

My car is still making troublesome sounds and feelings of vibration.  I don’t entirely trust it, but I feel spread very, very thin these days like spending many hundreds to diagnose and fix whatever is going on is just beyond my reach.  It’s like there feels something wrong with the suspension, or steering/wheel connections… plus an .. exhaust leak?  Something is causing it to shake at idle.  And the transmission, when I let the clutch out, thrums in a way I find disconcerting.  So, anyway driving lately hasn’t really been reassuring.  Has slowed me down, though.

So apparently cinder may be driving down here tomorrow! goodness gracious.  At least the room is pretty much ready to go, just need to clean some stuff out.  I have to also clean off at least half the office to find usable desk space (this mostly involves a lot of filing and judicious trashing) and provide internet up there for her old G5.  I bought …. this.   An apple airport express.  My hope is that this will latch onto the existing wireless network and .. make it better.   For the upstairs.  And also provide an ethernet port to plug in ancient machines of yore that lack the wireless capabilities.  I believe this is possible.

Other things to do:

Finish painting closet door / rehang.
Find new storage for geoffs stuff (closet?)
Install floor trim
Empty closet (rehome linens and towels, clothes)
Clear out office/organize/file
Set up network

Make dining room into a place more fit for dining, and less workshop.
Finish drywall??? ugh
Transplant new plants
omg coop

Not much else, the week has been pretty normal – work, come home, eat delicious dinners, and either raid or completely bail on raiding as the case may be (Tuesday night REQUIRED pizza and beer in santa fe).  We’re up to the final season of The Wire – it will have taken us almost a year watching off and on during visits to get through it!   Will have to find a suitable follow-up.  It’s nice just playing at leading a life, I suppose – the time between visit this round seemed very very long.

I did end up making those yak burgers! Although not the sausage.  Grilling, always fun.  The spicy ketchup is fun, and I thought the meat had a very nice flavor.  Geoff actually had some too – I’m eating less meat overall as mentioned, and he’s open to eating it for “special occasions” – not more than a few times a year I’m sure.  It was a little odd, to be honest!  I had mentioned that I got some local grass-raised Yak meat from Taos, and that I thought I’d make a burger to try it out (he’s been positive about my goal to limit meat intake to local/sustainably raised non-factory sources so I had no qualms there) and I figured I’d make a gardenburger for him, but he offered to just have a yak.  I was like … ok!  I suppose because it was rather recently that I’d inquired how he would feel about the occasional meats (which was itself spurred by the menu for a special dinner that I wanted to attend).  Anyway, I was sort of uncertain how to feel (guilt? pleasure?) and he was a little reserved as well.  When I cook vegetarian stuff as is the norm, I can be like How do you like it?? is it good? are you pleased??? But with this, I didn’t know what the right attitude was!  So I was quite hesitant in asking what he thought, because, such a loaded question.

Ended up not really talking until the following evening, he said physically he felt mostly fine although certainly the digestive track changes over time with a vegetarian diet – that could have been worse.  Didn’t seem quite sure how he felt about the experience, though he’s not ruling it out or anything.  Still processing. Talked a bit about the morality of killing miserable animals in horrid conditions for food, vs animals that have had a pleasant existence comparatively grazing in the mountains – it’s like, ok well its clearly better. But, then vs eating animal flesh at all – is it necessary?  And yes, the beeve or whatever may have been happier in its life up till that moment of death, but in the end it still died for you so is it really a huge difference, or merely an improvement on an undesirable situation?  I tend to come at it from a slightly different angle – I’m fine with the idea that humans are omnivores; I do not believe that a person needs to have meat with every meal (far from it); and I think that just because it’s morally acceptable to eat meat, that doesn’t give us the right to be cruel about it.  I tend to be somewhat more concerned with the impact that one’s diet has on the environment and in that sense, eating vegetarian isn’t necessarily and obviously superior just because you forsake meat.

It’s not like our farming policies and practices are benchmarks in sustainability and good practice whereas factory (meat) farming is all that’s wrong with the country.  Far from it … so where I struggle is, how do you weigh the impact of a vegetarian meat-substitute (like this one – and these are fucking delicious, I must say. But click on the drop-down list of ingredients) vs a grazed and locally slaughtered animal like my Yak (where the ingredient list is literally just yak).   So, on the one hand you’ve got a product where, it’s true nothing died for your meal directly at least, but it implicitly supports the crazy corn/soy farming subsidies, it’s highly processed and full of additives, and who can calculate just how much refined oil products were consumed in the manufacture, packaging and shipping all over the country to get it to your freezer – vs some meat in a simple vacuum-sealed package that traveled under 100 miles to arrive at your farmers market.  For me, if I were to be tipped into making an even larger lifestyle change than I already have, to feel good about myself and my actions, not to mention healthy, I would be a lot more inclined to say that being careful to eat locally and seasonally would have a much larger real-world impact than going vegetarian in a careless way.  I’m sure my opinions are flavored a bit by all the lazy vegetarians I’ve known over my life.  By which I mean, those who eschew meat, and subsist on kraft mac n cheese and toasted white bread.  I’m sure they have their reasons, and that’s fine, but it definitely does not speak to me.

So, along those lines, I was very pleased to create a few meals last week that were 100% local from the farmer’s market with eggs from my very own chickens.  I find that a lot more satisfying, on a personal level, than “just” making a vegetarian dish using ingredients that have been shipped to me from mexico.  Although to be fair, it’s just another example of how standards change – for instance “just” making a vegetarian meal from scratch even if the vegetables aren’t necessarily seasonal is way way more pleasing than eating something already prepared, processed, and frozen for my convenience.  So, you know. I guess in general I feel like I’m doing better, but there’s still room for improvement! Todays farmer’s market haul was another huge sack of greens and onions and peas and mushrooms and herbs and the first cherries of the season! Exciting.  If I can find my muffin tin, I am thinking some mini-fritatta could be the way to go for some of it!

One of the things that Geoff has been sort of going in circles around, is the idea of eating some animals but not others – like why some are “pets” and therefor sacred, but others are ok to raise for slaughter.  I have some thoughts there but I guess that’s a topic for another day.

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In which i prove technically adept

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Motivated by a friend who is doing a 21-day posting challenge I thought I’d try and write more too – came over to wordpress and in the process of marking some comments as spam, I accidentally relegated all of my “good” comments to the spam bin.  Which is at last count 2700 comments deep.  I searched out the names I know, so probably retrieved most of them, but it took me the better part of an hour to undo that damage.  One step forward, and then a toppling, staggering collapse backwards.

Not feeling super hot today.  A phone call with the debt collectors left me in tears but scared off the collector, at least temporarily.  The saga to date – on a $2500 loan, I didn’t realize it existed, got sent to collection, hated hated hated hated the slimy fuckers with a burning passion, didn’t want to pay, finally paid down $2000 of it, but they insisted I owed way waaaaay more than the last $500 so I stopped returning their calls.  It got bounced around some more, and a hold was put on my WPI account which would prevent me from registering for further classes (unknown if it will prevent graduation).  The latest bill to arrive claims I owe $1900 – I call bullshit and ask for an itemized statement of there the hell that extra $1400 came from.  The company is unable to provide this, claiming a “principle” of $1300 + $400 in fees and $200 in interest.  I offer to pay $1500 to make the whole mess go away.  I’m told they will submit this settlement offer – a few weeks later, the lady gets back to me and says no, and furthermore claims I had previously contacted the lender (ECSI) and offered a settlement which they turned down.  I did no such thing!  The collection agency, being unable to tell me how it is that I owe $1300 on $500 told me to contact ECSI to get that information.  I called them up and was told in no uncertain terms that they no longer handed the loan and would be unable to give me that information.  That was the full extent of the conversation I had with a rep – I don’t even have an account number with them, no money was discussed and there’s no way I could have made an offer to this underling on an account they claimed no access to.   It’s all just … preposterous.

Flash forward one day and I am talking with the collectors again.  The lady is telling me over and over to make a payment of $1500 (since I stated I could pay that in lump sum as part of my offer) and work out a payment plan for the remaining $400.  I was like no until you tell me where that $1300 came from!  She was like :| hang on.   And I got elevated to her boss.  I explained once again, I’ve already paid down $2000 so what’s the deal.  He has asked me to send proof of this payment – so …. I’ll see what I can find.   I’m pretty sure the answer is going to be that I’m fucked, and that I made that payment to a different collection agency and they took $800 of my money for themselves, gave $1200 to wpi, and then passed on the loan to someone else (Security Credit) who added their own $400 fee and $200 in interest.  And they are going to tell me well golly that’s just too bad but you still owe us $1900.  Fucking cocksuckers, all of them.

But – good news. Geoff is coming out for a 2-week visit tomorrow!  Ah, I’m so excited to be able to relax and enjoy some summer with him :)   All sort of grilling and hiking and refreshing alcoholic concoctions.  And my little chicks are doing well, at 2 months old now.  I found a home for the baby rooster, who has been getting me up at 6am for the last week with his baby vocal cords!  So, on the way to the airport tomorrow making a detour outside santa fe right off the highway to meet up with a lady who has “three acres with goats sheep and a cow.  Yes, one cow. ” – she used to have peacocks, and so had a coop already, and wants to pick up some chickens to teach her daughters responsibility.  She thinks the silkie is adorable (he is) and will have no problem with the crowing.  Perfect!!  And we’ll be able to sleep in Saturday, haha.

Geoff can help me build the coop which I have all drafted out, and lumber bought just need to start applying saw and nails.  I hope to frame it out Saturday, and then on Sunday tear down the ghetto old coop to scavenge plywood and the roof structure.  After that, young and old will need to be integrated into the new house!  We’ll see how that goes – the 2 pullets are likely to be missing their boy, and they are much, much smaller than the adult hens so I hope they don’t get picked on too badly.  They have all had plenty of free-range mingle time these last 2 weeks, but in the giant yard it’s not a problem.  Sometimes Peggy Sue gets a gleam in her eyes and goes after one, but they are fast.  I hope that at twilight everyone will be confused about the new coop situation and I can stuff them in – sleepy hens are generally peaceful hens.

So, this 2 week visit is a sort of a trial run to see if Geoff can be highly productive while out here.  If it goes well, his advisors have okay’d him spending 50/50 time split between here and FL.  Since he can do all his research work from anywhere, the only change would be the weekly meeting- so more updates, or teleconference or something.   So I need to get my ass in gear and clean out the office (filing. so much filing to do).  Anyway!  That would be awesome.  One visit per month or 5 weeks is livable and I’ve been holding up ok but more would be better.  Especially if there’s no physical requirements for him to be on campus.  At the end of the (school)year, it’s possible he might be out here more to sort of start to integrate into the (possible) postdoc position at the lab but that’s all still up in the air at this point.

MEANWHILE a good friend in CO is probably going to come down to spend a month or 2 living with me this summer – perhaps within the next week?  Not 100% sure when!  So, there will be visit overlap which will make for a crowded little house :)  But they know each other through our wow guild.  I’m looking forward to having a temporary roommate though, should be fun!  In October the 3 of us will probably all be at Blizzcon as well.   Super geeky amg.  I need to book rooms for that.  Thinking … roadtrip!

Eating/diet – continue to sort of pare meat out of my diet, but it’s just been a natural byproduct not something I’ve stressed over.  I don’t cook it for myself very often these days, limited to when I pick up some local grass-raised pork or bison from the farmers market.  This week, I got Yak from Taos!  Excited to see how that compares to the santa fe bison which was SO GOOD.  For lunches, I’ve long been a fan of lean cuisines “spa” line of healthier frozen meal offerings.  But like 95% of them contain chicken.  Thinking about factory raised chickens makes me very sad.  But vegetarian frozen meals tend to cost twice or more as much! Arhg!  It’s very odd how we subsidize things.   But, we’re sort of meeting in the middle, where I’m eating less meat overall for health and ethical reasons, and he may be open to eating happy meat on special occasions.  Which is sort of how I’ve started thinking about meat (for special occasions).   I’m really not really into absolutes like complete denial.  If I really want something, I can have it – but it doesn’t need to be every day of the week.  Also seafood stays!  mmmmmm sushi.

Diet wise, I usually have about one week a month where I slip, and progress levels off, and then picks back up again.  Down about 25lbs to date since February.  If I can hold this pace I could be almost at 150 for my birthday which was sort of a private goal.  In the 170s it seemed impossible!   Potential-roommate cinder has also been talking about weight loss, so might be able to rope her in as well.  She’s also a gluten-intolerant vegetarian, so cooking at home will be slightly more complex (But not hugely so.  Bread is wicked NOT diet food).  Probably the biggest change for her will be the lack of late-night food options here!  It’s not like you can run out at 10pm and hit up Qdoba or something.  So if that happens, will have to carve out office space for her as well!  Been thinking on how to move stuff to the shed and in general open up space in the house to work all this out.  Which had needed to happen anyway.  Exciting times!

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Summer projects

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Are far too numerous!  I want to build a coop out of cob, get a motorcycle running, pour a concrete slab, do some gardening, engineer some animal waterers, build a backyard patio (with a firepit!) and do some woodworking!  Also I need to build a compost bin, and fix my car stereo (and the suspension for that matter).  Oh, and renew my passport.  Oh, and hardwire the power inverted and mount it under a seat! Possibly investigate converting the mini into a DVR?  This weekend, though getting a larger coop is really the biggest thing that needs to happen – I got my baby chicks on April 9 which means they are already 7 weeks old! wow.  I have been throwing them outside for the day since it’s so warm out.  They don’t range too far afield yet – mostly content to snuggle in the warren of paths under the rosebush or peck at grass shoots in the sun.  Haven’t seen much confrontation between the older hens and the babies – I think everyone has so much space that it’s a non-issue.  A few pecks to a rump from Abigail if one got too impertinent but that was it.  The only issue, really is that the grownup hens have taken a liking to my chick starter crumbles!  Which is fine for them, they have access to plenty of calcium in the form of oyster shells and crushed eggshells, as long as the babies get enough food.  What I might do is transition them to grower this weekend, and put that out for everyone.  The older ones can supplement as they need.  The need for a more robust watering system is also becoming more apparent.   Thinking back to last year, I have no idea what I was feeding my pullets!  I probably started them on layer feed way too early, in retrospect – might be my fault while darlene is a little messed up.  But I really can’t remember.  Oh well!

Some guidelines for feed:

Approximate Ages (weeks)     Crude protein %     Calcium %     Phosphorus %
Starter 0 – 6 weeks                        18                       0.9               0.45
Grower 6 – 16 weeks                     16                       0.8               0.45
Pre-layer 16 – 19 weeks                17                       2.0               0.45
Laying > 19                               17 – 19             3.8 – 4.0            0.45

Came across some relatively unknown national parks in NM that look like possible fun to visit – Capulin Volcano, Gila cliff dwellings, and Aztec ruins!

I went to a talk this weekend given by Caballo Blanco, which was basically him recounting the story of his experience with the Raramuri, basically as the book details but a different perspective.  Slightly less embellishment – or perhaps simply the embellishment that he chose to include!

Chatted a bit with him after the talk about safety traveling through mexico, and he reaffirmed what I had personally come to believe – stay out of Juarez, cross the border zone as rapidly as possible and then you are just .. in a country with regular people.  The two towns that came up the most relative to conversations about the book, and copper canyon in general,  were Urique and Batopilas – in my original plan I think I was a little apprehensive about these base of canyon towns, because access is via a somewhat dodgy cliffside dirt road so I sort of wrote it off, but now I realize that this is where I must go :) It’s all very clear. I could start in Chihuahua as planned, maybe stay at this hotel. And then on to the canyons, and look at this place to stay!  Entre Amigos.  It’s like it was designed for me.  I am thinking however that taking my car is not the way to go.  It’s just too damn loud, and loud. And obnoxious.  I mean, I always thought that, I just couldn’t come up with a better plan – but now I feel that bus and train is the way to go!  Just do it backpacking style. So, back to the drawing board on the best way for that to happen.  I think hiring someone like caballo to be guide would be very nice.  Have dreams of hiking through the canyons and ending up at this one amazing lodge, the Have no idea at this point if Geoff will ever be open to the idea.  I was once again thinking dreamily about a christmas break trip, but Kelly just posted on facebook that they are considering a family trip to Spain.  Hell yeah!

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running fool

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Lately I’ve been on a running kick – by which I mean, reading about running.  A few months back, a friend mentioned a book; Born to Run, and a program; couch to 5k. I looked into both and was surprised to see the book was about (in part) the Tarahamura people, of copper canyon mexico. The one and the same place I wanted to visit last winter!  Intrigued, I ordered the kindle edition but had to finish reading a rather dry book first.  I also started trying to run, following the C25K program which was going well enough till I started getting very bad foot pain, which I self-ID’d as sesamoid inflammation.  By taking it easy and not running, the pain is gone at last and now that I’ve had a chance to start reading this book I’m quite interested in trying something different.  I’m also totally not over my desire to visit the area, and all this reading has only reinvigorated that.

The “something different” is adjusting my running style and footwear to something a lot more minimalistic and forefront-strike oriented.  I could get some thin soles shoes, just use my old street pumas, or pick up something freaky like the vibram fivefingers.  But, after I spent so much time making fun of them! >.<  After all the reading I’ve done, though I’m probably going to get a pair of those – I miss the feeling of hiking and walking in sandals but its just so rugged (and sharp!) out here.  I’d like a pair of the TKO Treks but they aren’t released for women yet – “late spring.” Can I hold out?

I found an Article in Nature about the differences in impact when running fore-foot-strike versus rear-foot-strike which is how runners who predominantly run in thickly padded running shoes stride.  Runners who are accustomed to running barefoot have 1/3 the impact to their legs than shod runners do! (the video link is a nice accompaniment to the charts presented in the Nature article)

Interview with Caballo Blanco, from the book born to run. This is the guy who lives amongst the Tarahumara and organized the copper canyon ultra marathon.  I was looking through links the other night and I found a facebook page he’s behind where I just happened to see in a random comment thread that….. he’s coming to los alamos this weekend! To run in the Jemez Mountain Trail Runs 50miler!  AND give a talk on Sunday, right in town!  I’m so excited! And proceeds go to Norawas de Rarámuri.

And, what’s more caballo blanco even leads adventure tours of the copper canyons! Needless to say, I am intrigued.  The prices seem decent for a personal guide into one of the most rugged areas in the world!  Perhaps I could learn from some experts on making homemade tortillas, because I gotta tell you all my attempts with masa harina have been tasty, but distinctly un-tortilla-like.

I contacted the organizers for this weekend, and have the go ahead to take some pics at the talk on Sunday which I’m looking forward to, and I think I will take photos of the race as well.  It’ll be a good excuse to go for a nice hike on a pretty day and see some athletes doing their thing.  A friend from santa fe might come up and hang out as well, so that’ll be cool.

Some very nice pictures from the 2010 CCUM.

Barefoot Ted, also from the Born to Run book had some interesting posts on his blog.  I liked this interview with him in Runners World.   And an interview with the author of Born to Run.

Last night I went for an experimental walk, only like 3/4 mile, barefoot with a few short testing the waters strides of running.  It felt nice, but I did step on some pointy rocks!  My impatience is mounting up rapidly, now that I’ve decided I want monkey shoes I want them NOW dammit.  If I go to santa fe this weekend to stock up on some staples, I’ll swing by REI and try some on, even if my precious Treks aren’t manufactured yet.  And I need to translate all of this desire to run into actual running.  I want to be able to run wild antelopes to the death!

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ancient secret revealed to be delicious

Thursday, April 15, 2010

I made a delicious soup tonight!  It was split mung bean (dhal) which I made because in my Higher Taste cookbook they mention mung a lot, and the last time I was at the hippie co-op I saw they had mung beans in the bulk section!  So, I bought some and then made this soup with what I had on hand. Was very easy, like 1 cup beans, and added fresh grated ginger, tumeric, and cumin and a lot of other spices in some seasoning blends that I had on hand, cook for an hour till soft.  Diced up some cilantro and ate – and it was really, really good.  I at like 1/2 the pot of soup accidentally.  So that was about 21g protein and 23g dietary fiber! wow.  Mung beans = amazing.  I feel like I learned a secret today!

I’ve started tracking my protein/fiber numbers as well as my overall calories, it’s sort of like a mini-game trying to maximize them without going over in calories. Very difficult, but of course easier with more whole foods.  Today I managed to get 49g protein and 33g fiber which is really good! I’m supposed to be hitting around 55 and 25, respectively.  For around 1100 calories today, I’m pretty pleased. I even spoiled myself by going to quiznos to get a sub – small veggie on wheat.  I remember 2 months ago I was like “go to quiznos and NOT get a regular sized chicken sub??? How will that be satisfying omg”  and today it was like .. a somewhat larger than usual lunch.  Like wow, I get to eat this WHOLE sammich??  It’s funny how things change.  And most days I feel completely satisfied.  Today I feel like I overate, lol.

Granted, not always – last night I had already had my 1100 or so for the day, but I was still really hungry!  The point isn’t to be in pain, so I fixed myself a snack – diced up some tomatoes and basil, and 1oz fresh mozzarella, a little olive oil and vinegar for dressing and jammed it all inside a whole grain pita pocket thing.  All told it was around 200calories, totally satisfying and I didn’t feel too guilty about going over since it was good ingredients.  That said, if I’m starting to feel the tiniest stirrings of hunger as a lay down to go to sleep I know I’ve done it right :)

I’ve been buying a lot of vegetables when I go to the store each week and preparing what I have on hand as I get inspired. It’s working out pretty well!  I was excited to see that the CSA I belonged to last year is starting home delivery and smaller orders!  They are rolling out the changes in a few weeks so I’ve really got my fingers crossed that I can start getting organic CSA seasonal goodness delivered to me! I’d be so happy about that.  I loved the boxes I did last summer, but even on the every other week schedule it was more than I could eat by myself :(  So, I hope that works out.  And the los alamos farmers market should be starting back up for the season any moment now!

T-minus 36 hours till parents get here – need to really do my cleaning and uhhh finish the guest bedroom remodel. …. [shifty eyes]  … also I should do my taxes.  And I need to take pics of the peeps before they explode into gawky gangly dinosaur adolescent chickens.

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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

I didn’t sleep very well last night because my brain was spinning at one million mph, mostly about silly things like forums and websites.  This year for derby, I don’t plan on skating.  But I still like being involved – so I decided I’d continue to do the photography thing, and see if I could contribute to the organizing.  For me, remotely that means … websites and forums!!! The team uses a yahoo mailing list to organize everything.  It’s a ton of email, subjects all jumbled up, and in general it annoys me.  It’s also extremely hard to archive information, or find old topics that may still be pertinent (gear things, fitness, etc).  So I wanted them to have and use a real actual forum.  After some nagging and wheedling, I got the login information for the webhosting, and the joomla content management install.  So, the first thing was to install a forum. I went with phpBB because I’m reasonably familiar with it.  I got that all set up, looking somewhat decent, organized to support multiple teams and levels of access, and then started hounding people to join.  Fortunately in this venture I convinced a super enthusiastic and non-cynical 18-y/o skater who’s totally a driving force in the league.  So she’s been helpful in herding the cats (no one listens to me).   Adoption is slow, but it is at least proceeding.  The next task is to overhaul the website, which is ugly and clunky and a pain to update.  It’s full of information that isn’t relevant, and lacking in the things that visitors need to know.  It’s not worth updating, so I’m just going to destroy it and start over.  The catch is, the webhosting only allows 1gb disk space, and I’m finding that I have trouble installing a second Joomla to play around with.  I’d rather build the new site ON its host home rather than build it elsewhere and import it although that’s certainly an option. Then there’s the third option, which is to just get new hosting.  $30/month for 1gb disk and 20gb bandwidth is pretty ridiculous, with $2.50/GB fees if you use too much bandwidth.  Though granted we only use like 150MB bandwidth currently.  And an additional $20/month for another 1gb server space.  Seriously? $20 buys like 160gb these days.  The only thing I do not have is the login information for godaddy to switch the DNS when the time comes, but I could just start a new hosting plan on Dreamhost, which I’m familiar with, for like $9/month for unlimited everything.  If I just did that, then I could start building a new site on the new server from scratch and when it was all good to go, the only thing that would be tricky would be importing the phpbb forum.  Which is doable, but I don’t have access to phpmyadmin on the current hosting.  I could probably ask them, but as I grow more and more convinced to jump ship I feel bad asking for help.  They are nice people, it’s just a shitty value.

Anyway, I think the thing to do is talk the league into switching hosts.  I’ll have to figure out who pays for this stuff anyhow.  And talk them into a year upfront at $120 vs $30/month. Maybe in the meantime I’ll just install a JOOMLA onto my own website and migrate it over later.  I’ll just … do that.

I’ve also still got like 5gb of photos to process and deal with.   I downloaded the beta of Lightroom3, and it’s nice and shiny, but not familiar to me.  And I keep getting home from work super tired, so it’s not going very fast.  This weekend – need to paint baseboard and finish putting the not-pink room back together in anticipation for mom’s visit.  She and dan are coming out for a week, and geoff will be out for a few days overlapping the next weekend.  So it will be very busy around here!! looking forward to that.

Watched No Reservations this week, awesome as usual.  It was a how-to episode featuring some very skilled chefs.  Although some day I’ll make beef bourguignon, the recipe that really caught my eye was the spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce.   Well, that and the whole roast chicken by thomas keller.  Maybe I’ll try that when mom is around!

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better living through technology

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Well, things are better since that last post! In brief, January was a tough month, because we did a lot of talking. A LOT.  My thought process was basically, if we are going to make this work I’m going to bring up everything I had reservations about, just get it all out in the open so everyone can make the most informed decisions.  After a month, things came to a head when I wanted to go camping with my CO guy, now demoted to friend, but still someone I’d like to hang out with. Plus he had a wood-stove-heated tent, so we could camp in winter! Geoff however, didn’t like that plan.  He basically said that he wasn’t cool with me spending time with guys, alone, under any circumstances. I sort of wrote up a list of examples of different plausible situations where I might be spending time with a guy, like – is this ok? what about this? how about now? why? And he said basically no, no and no.  So I was like ok well then this is not going to work out.  But I took the time to write a letter explaining why.  Explaining how I value my guy friends, and that just because someone else is interested in me that doesn’t mean I’m required to act on it, like I lack free will of my own.  How I feel about that whole “I trust you but I don’t trust other guys” line of BS.  I was pretty sad, but it seemed final.  But to my surprised, he called while I was out walking to calm down and said that what I’d written made sense and he was being an idiot. Or something to that effect!  So we went from there.  February was much easier, I went to FL for the first time to visit there, see his little student world.  We had good adventures freezing to death after skinny dipping in the balls cold pond at the hippy forest hostel in GA, and stayed at a really nice little hotel on the beach in jax. Blew up a tire on the highway, walked around campus.  Then he came here for a week at spring break, and we took a road trip down to the Bosque del Apache (pictures pending) and ate some delicious food and saw some beautiful scenery and birds and stayed at a little B&B (so nice).

And in other news, I went on a health kick!  I had been talking a lot of talk about actually tracking what I eat to see how much/bad it is, but I had sort of a wake-up moment when I was in Florida because there was a bathroom scale and I dared to step up on.  Unpleasant!  I have never before actually tried to lose weight. Sometime I sort of intimate, vaguely, that I should watch what I eat more, but I don’t believe that most people have a good feeling for how many calories they actually consume. I didn’t! So, step one has been correcting that.  I installed LoseIt! for the iphone and began obsessively tracking things.  I also plugged in my current weight, height, age, and activity level (what’s up, sedentary!) to see how much I should be eating, to lose 2ish lb/week.  It’s … much less than I’d eat left to my own devices, that’s for sure! I still didn’t have a scale at home, and Geoff talks about doing yoga though his wii fit, so I thought I’d pick one of those up off ebay.  I figure if I never use it, I can just resell for a small loss.  I don’t actually use it very much, but sometimes I do some yoga!  And I check in regularly to see what my BWI/weight are.  So the good news is … it’s actually working!  Assuming that my initial weight on the other scale is aligned with the readings from the wii (which I think is reasonable) I’m down 15lb so far (since mid-February).  So, pretty much on track.  I think the current prediction for college weight is early June, assuming I keep up the same rate of course.  Funny enough I don’t actually feel very different at this point!  And even though I knew I’d regret it later if this actually worked, I refused to take any before pics.  Just too horrifying.

In addition to the calorie reduction, have been trying to exercise more.  Any bonus activity is also logged, so I know approx how much I burned off and eat more so I end up at a net of ~1100 cal/day.  Mostly more walks, but I wanted to start running as well!  Also I desired a more accurate way to track times / distance / calories AND SO I bought a Nike+ widget to install in my shoe (or strapped on top, more accurately).  I thought it was a gps o matic, but it’s pretty much just a fancy pedometer!  It seems to work reasonably well, though.  So I decided to try and start running as well!  A friend told me about this program, couch to 5k, that she was doing to gradually work up to it and reduce muscle strain and injury.  Sounds good!  Plus there are podcasts!  So now when I go out I’m all strapped up with wires and gadgets that are tracking, monitoring and encouraging me.  Which is very helpful!  That said, with the weather turning nice I can see why people get those armbands – I’m running out of pockets.

Aspen is also really into this program.  My shoes are North Face trail running shoes, because I want to try and avoid pavement as much as possible out of deference to my old person joints.  So she gets to come along.  If need be, I can jog with her on leash, but it’s less fun for both of us.

HOWEVER, last week sadness!  My feet started to hurt.  I’ve been running a little more on the balls of my feet as opposed to heel-striking but either I’m doing it wrong, or I have bad anatomy (I’d buy either, really) because I started to get very bad ball of the foot pain.  My internet research has led me to suspect the sesamoids – two stupid little bones under the ball that act as a pulley for tendons to the big toe.  It hurts to apply pressure, but only from certain angles.  And moving my toe in certain ways really makes it ache.  So I took the weekend off except for some walking, and busted out some orthotics from REI for high arches.  And …. they still hurt.  It’s been almost a week now (my progress! nooooo) with barely any improvement so I’m not sure what I should do at this point.  Sulk more? Or call a doctor.  One the one hand, if these stupid little bones are a problem for me, that explains the crippling pain I get when I try and wear heels ever :(  I totally keep buying cute heels, too.  Even though I know I last for like an hour, tops, and won’t be able to walk the next day.  Geoff thinks I should just take up biking, but then Aspen can’t come along, so.  sulk.

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